One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian.
Anyway, it's not a very entertaining letter. It was, as usual, amusingly formatted (Outlook Express is evil software), but I've stripped all that gunky Microsoft html out of it to simplify posting it. It's your usual argument from poorly understood physics: the Big Bang is evidence of Jesus, really tiny numbers prove Jesus, mangled information theory proves Jesus. It does have one novel argument I haven't seen before, that a kitchen spray bottle proves Jesus, but I don't think it's going to get much traction in the scientific community. I haven't bothered to reply to it, but if anyone wants to shred the nonsense in the comments, maybe the authors will find it online.
Oh, and welcome to the Atheist Fraternity! Remember, we're getting together with the Atheist Sorority on Friday night for a Toga Party!
To: PZ Myers biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Mr Meyers, Godless Atheist
And all of your fraternity of Godless Atheists :
Have you ever heard of Stephen Hawkins? How about the big bang theory, ever hear about that?
Do you understand it? Do you understand Physics? What part of "Beginning" don't you quite Grasp?
Are you aware of Albert Einstein?
Are you aware of any acknowledged greater minds in the history of the world than these two Gentlemen?
Ever heard the Joke about a group of Scientists challenging God because they had created life in a test tube? You God gathers his dust to create another man, and the scientists start gathering their dust. God tells the group of scientists, Whoa. Wait a minute fellows, create your own dust!
I am always amazed at people like you, you firmly and whole heartedly believe that what we know as the universe, came into being by some big whoops of nothing. That absolutely Nothing had anything to do with creation accept some unlimited number of coincidences, and yet you believe that a belief in an intelligent creator somehow endows total stupidity. May God strike me with the Stupidity of Einstein and Hawkins and lots of it.
Bring on the National Academy Of Science, all of the Non-believers, and evolutionists with their phoney theories which Darwin manufactured and lied about from the beginning. Talk about Faith! If anyone can accept all of the assumptions and maybes taught by these intellectually deprived Godless people of Science, their faith in an accidental whoops creation surpasses most Christian's faith in God.
100 years ago this year, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics and all of this at age 26.
His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a 'fudge factor' that ensured a 'steady state' universe, one that had no beginning or end.
But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." He referred to the 'fudge factor' to achieve a steady-state universe as the biggest blunder of his career.
Einstein's theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there's an even more important implication of Einstein's discovery.
Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang.
That's right -- time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by some intelligence existing outside of space and time.
About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book "The World As I See It" that the harmony of natural law "Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
To quote Ann Coulter, "Liberal's' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record- and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God."
"Although God believers don't need evolution to be false, Godless atheists need evolution to be true. William Provine, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University, calls Darwinism the greatest engine of atheism devised by man. His fellow Darwin disciple, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins famously said," Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." [footnote omitted] This is why there is mass panic on the left whenever someone mentions the vast and accumulating evidence against evolution."
Putting Liberal Mythology (Darwinism) in proper prospective.
On The Trash Heap!
The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first. But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition of the Big Bang would have left behind a 'hot flash' of radiation.
If a big black wood stove produces heat that you can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout the universe.
In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at Bell Labs in New Jersey found it. At first, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna, they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise.They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the antenna.
At first they thought it was bird droppings. The antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when they're brand new) but even after cleaning off the antenna, they still picked up this noise.
This noise had actually been predicted in detail by other astronomers, and after a year of checking and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion: The Big Bang theory really was correct.
In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much resistance to the Big Bang theory.
He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to describe the universe in ways which require no explanation. And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only *describe* things - that's perfectly sensible. If you have a universe which has always been there, you don't explain it, right?
"Somebody asks you, "Why are all the secretaries in your company are women?" You can say, 'Well, it's always been that way.' That's a way of not having to explain it. So in the same way, theories which don't require explanation tend to be the ones accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable and the best way to make science work."
But on the older theory that the universe was eternal, he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. What we find - the simplest theory - is a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing of the universe."
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of this radiation. The Big Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly validated theories in all of science.
Remember, Liberal Mythology teaches Darwinism, or Evolution by CHANCE!
While I admit that I am stupid (less intelligent than Liberals and non-Believers) in my stupidity I choose to believe in an Intelligent Creator,...GOD!
In your kitchen cabinet, you probably have a spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle. If you twist the nozzle one way, it sprays a fine mist into the air. You twist the nozzle the other way, it squirts a jet of water in a straight line. You turn that nozzle to the exact position you want so you can wash a mirror, clean up a spill, or whatever.
If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star.
If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity.
A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole.
The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call "the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.
If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would look like this:
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
In their paper "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists from Stanford University stated that the existence of this dark energy term "Would have required a miracle...An external agent, external to space and time, intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own."
Just for comparison, the best human engineering example is the Gravity Wave Telescope, which was built with a precision of accuracy to one part in ten with 23 zeros. The Designer, this "external agent" that created our universe must possess an intellect, knowledge, creativity and power trillions and trillions of times greater than we humans have.
Hello!
Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find some way to explain all of this. One of the more common explanations seems to be "There was an infinite number of universes, so it was inevitable that things would have turned out right in at least one of them."
Assuming of course that the "Right Universe" is referring to our Universe.
The "infinite universes" theory is truly an amazing theory. Just think about it, if there is an infinite number of universes, then absolutely everything is not only possible...It's actually happened, or is happening! That to me is even more amazing than a single Universe Theory, but to the Non-believer, this sorta, kinda, maybe says ...... CHANCE, or that there is no intelligent designer we may refer to as GOD!
Some people believe in God with a capital G.
And some folks believe in Chance with a Capital C. This is perfect idiocy, accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.
America, please come back to God, he will accept you and forgive you with open arms. God is certainly aware of how tough it is here, but don't blame God for so many turning to evil. God did not force Eve to accept Satan's temptation. God does not force each of us to accept Satan's plan and not God's plan of Redemption.
Those of us who are Believers in God and his plan of salvation through Messiah Yeshua/Jesus, and those of us who read his word the Holy Bible, know and have heard these words expressed many times:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The message contained within these few simple words in John 1:1 are absolute proof of the existence of God the creator of all that there is, was, or ever shall be. People who may have dozens of degrees through education after there names, are themselves proof that God exists simply because of that education.
We know that the God's word teaches us that all that was created by God, was created through Yeshua/Jesus, the Word of God. God spoke creation into being by and through his son Yeshua/Jesus. That nothing was made or created that was not created by God in this manner.
We are taught also through God's Holy Word that Yeshua/Jesus is God, manifested in the flesh as a human to offer to the world God's true plan of salvation through faith in God's work as Yeshua/Jesus as the Christ. Faith that the Christ accepted God's wrath for our sins in our place by allowing himself to be Crucified for all the sins of all men who would accept his redemption through simple faith offered to us by God as describe in the New Testament.
This email is proof of the existence of God. This email you're reading contains letters, words and sentences. It contains a message that means something. As long as you can read English, you can understand the message in this email, and it's meaning.
The email as a carrier is meaningless, and immaterial. The information that is contained by the email carrier however, is itself a very unique kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning and intent of the information should remain the same.
Information via messages can be in English, French or Chinese. Morse Code, or mating calls of birds, or sent over the Internet, radio or television, or computer programs, or architect blueprints or even stone carvings. With all of this in mind, understand that every cell in our body contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete plan for each of us.
OK, so what does this all have to do with proof about the existence of God?
It's very simple. Messages, languages, and coded information can ONLY come from an intelligent mind. A mind that agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and intent. Whether we use the simplest possible explanation, such as the one in this email, or if we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, We may say this with total confidence:
"Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind. No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind."
Nature can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalagtites. Tornados and turbulence and cloud formations. But non-living things cannot create language. They *cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information. Not without God's help of course!
It is believed and taught by many that life on planet earth arose naturally from the "primordial soup," the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells.
But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, 'Where did the information come from originally?
DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise instructions.
DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a "pattern." Yes DNA, contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way that English, Russian and Chinese and even HTML are languages.
To anyone who believes and teaches that life arose naturally and was not created by God with an intelligent mind, they must then explain: "Where did the information come from? Is anyone able to show just ONE example of a language that didn't come from a mind?"
As simple as this question is, neither you and certainly not one of your so-called highly educated Godless cohorts are able to explain where the information came from. This riddle is "So simple any child can understand, yet so complex, not one unbeliever or atheist can solve it."
Original Theory By Perry Marshall
Edited in part by D. Donohew
I think you'll agree, this one was less TimeCubish, and written more in the style of Early Godbotian.
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How odd that these cretins never apply this argument to their own "theory". Well, I suppose it really isn't all that odd, just stupid.
Ooh, thank you! Is there a secret handshake?
*snicker*.
"May God strike me with the Stupidity of Einstein and Hawkins and lots of it."
Well, if really you'll got striken with Einstein's stupidity, it would definetly be the proof that God exists.
Only God could aim to a brain that small and have any chance to really hit it.
I'm a little slow sometimes; did anyone catch a formal hypothesis?
Who's Steven Hawkins?
I didn't bother reading much after that, the incoherent, ranting, raving stupidity was too disgusting to look upon.
D. Donohew,
so the world began with big bang and we don't know what happened before. We have a cosmic mystery. By creating a god to try and explain it away, you debase that mystery, with false answer that may satisfy the part of your mind that demands some kind of certainty, but has nothing to do with reality. When we look at people who have come up with similar explanations for natural events in past that were later explained, we look at their explanations and call them superstitions.
There is no secret handshake. Atheists, remember?
Oh right (wink). If anyone is reading this there is no secret handshake.
Count me in!
Also, Steven Hawkins is the 2nd cousin twice removed of Stephen Hawking.
Vast? Accumulating? Like the intellectual gaps in this letter?
Now, where's my toga?
I must be getting soft. Once I saw "Hawkins" I started feeling sorry for the writer . . . This conflation of different meanings of information, though, it's sort of the same problem that Creationists have with the word "theory", isn't it?
i think... i need to be checked on this... but i think stephen hawkins is sadie hawkins' brother, whose theory that it is possible for girls to ask guys to dances proves that there must be a god.
Let me get this straight. Ann Coulter's going to be at the toga party?
Is it just me, or are we under attack from the Homsarmy?
I might just make a post about this particular bit of nonsense.
It sickens me that American culture is so violently anti-intellectual (as frankly it always has been) that the ignorant are vociferously proud of their ignorance and aggressive in their attacks on knowledge. In the ever more knowledge-intensive world of the 21st century, I fear that dooms this country to some very hard times ahead. I do not envy our children.
"To quote Ann Coulter..."
The argumentum ad Coulteram. Should be a logical fallacy in and of itself.
My favorite sentence is "This email is proof of the existence of God."
The spray bottle analogy is a genuine contribution to the collected works of creationists. A breakthrough, even. I would put it right up there with Art Hoppe's own special proof for the existence of God: "If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind.
That's not true. I found one right here.
There's a fallible piece of evidence that this is actually a cut and paste job - since it says that Einstein's miracle year was 100 years ago "this year". That was last year. Of course there are so many other errors in it, so who knows?
Can we have an Atheists "Silly Walk"?
A club ring? oooo... sweatbands!
A neat logo?
something?
Hmmm, by the way, isn't "Godless Atheist" a somewhat redundant designation?
I love how the author tries to make it so High Concept by focusing upon famous scientists—
—but then segues into absurdity with "To quote Ann Coulter..." This is, I believe, a case of "One step forward and two steps back."
Is there a club t-shirt?
Hmmm... we would need a slogan.
"Godless and Lovin' it"
"Happily Godless"
"I'm godless... pray for me sucker"
Have you ever heard of Stephen Hawkins?
Sure have. "I Put a Spell on You" is one of my favorite tunes.
Anyone feel like checking this screed against the Crackpot Index?
As everyone is pointing out, this thing is riddled with misconceptions and errors (Hawkins, 100 years, etc.).
What is amazing to me is when he goes on and on about the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation as proof that the universe had a beginning. He says proponents of the big bang predicted this radiation, and Penzias & Wilson discovered it.
Fantastic. Someone made a prediction, an experiment was done (inadvertently at first), and measurments were made. Thus, proof of the Big Bang. This seems to me to be science's ultimate defense against these whackjobs. If they can actually predict something that would be evidence of this high and mighty intelligence, and it's *there*, I can't imagine everyone in the scientific community ignoring it if there's no other explanation.
Unfortunately, we all know that "Look, Design! Complexity! God!" is not a rigorous scientific prediction that can be tested.
It just always pisses me off when crazies try and use one field of science (that they know nothing about) to disprove other fields of science (that they, once again, know nothing about).
*argh*
I want six minutes of my life back.
The letter didn't have intellectual gaps, the letter had intellectual chasms.
BTW, I'm a Godly atheist. I believe in God, it's his divinity I find improbable. :)
"While I admit that I am stupid (less intelligent than Liberals and non-Believers) in my stupidity I choose to believe in an Intelligent Creator,...GOD!"
I think that about sums it up.
On the plus side, these guys did manage to spell "atheist" correctly; on the minus side, they don't seem to be able to spell proper names at all well. They spelled my name two different ways in the first two lines.
On the other hand PJ I think this guy sent you your first section from Coutliers book he stands firmly behind.
Wow, this guy's got a lot of time on his hands.
"There's a fallible piece of evidence that this is actually a cut and paste job - since it says that Einstein's miracle year was 100 years ago "this year"."
Arh, archeology on the net is so much fun
Look at this article:
http://www.local4all.com/view_newsstory.php?news_id=283
It has the full Einstein quote and it is from 2005!
Digging a little deeper it looks like the segment, and others come from an email series written by a Perry Marshal, presumably the one mentioned in the mail.
You can order the emails in one easy step from this web page:
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/
(Outlook Express is evil software), but I've stripped all that gunky Microsoft html
No, it's the user that's evil.
Have you been submitting your inbox to "Fundies say the Darndest Things?" Share the wealth.
Hmmm. Well, it's an improvement on the last one, for the capitalization alone.
"Tautology"? That's a mighty big word for someone who can't even spell "Myers".
Perhaps the author shares your pirate fetish, and was thinking of young master *Jim* Hawkins.
BTW, does this fraternity have Greek letters?
So does D's quoting of Ann Coulter qualify in any way as a response to the Coulter challenge?
Wow... it just goes on, and on, and on!
Maybe Coulter and Hawking could co-author a scientific paper. He'd do the actual thinking and writing, and she could, uh... hmm, I can't really think of anything. Well she could take credit for the paper afterwards anyway, great scientific mind that she is.
Wow, this sort of thing just baffles me with its absolute and utter ignorance and stupidty. Ah, well. Makes the rest of us look like, uhm...Gods in comparison. :)
I really don't see why these self proclaimed 'creationists' try to find some sort of explaination to prove something that simply cannot be proven. The whole idea is inextricably intertwined with religion and as such, requires only faith to believe in. Nobody tries to scientifically explain (even though it would be wrong and impossible) religion so why bother trying to explain components of (a) religion (christian religion in this case)? It is equally impossible.
I also do not know why these christian fundamentalists (and there is no mistaking that is what they are. Just as crazy and crackpot as another religions fundamentalists. IE: Islam) cannot rectify the big bang and evolution in their belief system. It seems pretty simple to me that both can co-exist. The big bang, as a theory, would be pretty popular with these sorts. It suggests a huge explosion had created the universe, as we all know. But what caused the explosion? God, of course, would be the religious persons answer. Ok, then great. We can both agree that the big bang occured, it doesn't matter if I think god had nothing to do with it or not or if you think god did have some thing to do with it.
A similar thing can be said for evolution. What is so hard to believe about god having created evolution as the means to have everything created(Well, first you need to believe in god:))? Think of it this way...he created the big bang and everything after that was a naturally occuring event. The initial event may have been by the hand of god, but everything that follows is nature. So god created nature or the natural universe and then nature continued on its way after having been given an initial push. So, you see, we can have our cake and eat it too.
All that being said, Blaise Pascal has an interesting quote on belief in god:
"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists."
In a nutshell, it is better to believe in a god that turns out does not exist rather than to _not_ believe in a god that turns out _does_ exist. While neither can be proven the former is the safer bet. :)
Wow, the dust joke is uh, priceless...*MUST..RESIST URGE FOR...SARCASTIC LOOK..TO..OVERCOME FACE...*
Re: To anyone who believes and teaches that life arose naturally and was not created by God with an intelligent mind, they must then explain: "Where did the information come from? Is anyone able to show just ONE example of a language that didn't come from a mind?"
Yes - DNA.
Re: This riddle is "So simple any child can understand, yet so complex, not one unbeliever or atheist can solve it."
Solved (see above).
Now, all this genius needs to do is explain where God came from and he's done.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
-- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Also, is there some Biblical injunction against learning to spell?
I don't understand the random capitalization. Why do people do that? It's very annoying to read.
Well, I don't know if anyone has posted these yet; a quick scan didn't show me any URL that seemed to match. Here is the source (I think) upon which this guy largely seems to be basing his arguments (that may be an overly generous use of the term):
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/intelligent_evolution_quick_guide.pdf
... and... um this, maybe:
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/iidb.htm
DISCLAIMER: For entertainment purposes only. Read at your own risk.
Uncle Don
I've heard of Steven Hawkins! He did visual effects for The Amityville Horror. What does he have to do with our Godless Atheist Fraternity? (Godless as opposed to Godlike? And does fraternity mean no women are allowed? That's a bummer.)
God broke your HTML, Dr. Myers. Will you still deny his awesome power?
And to think I instead could have smashed my thumb with a hammer for the 6 mins I took to read that.
I suggest that our frat be named Gamma Omicron Delta.
"And does fraternity mean no women are allowed? That's a bummer."
Actually no, the oldest sororities were formed before the word "sorority" was in use, so for example, Kappa Alpha Theta, Delta Gamma and Kappa Kappa Gamma are "women's fraternities." I know, I know... but let's just go with it.
BTW, does this fraternity have Greek letters?
I vote for rho, tau, mu, and lambda but since I don't have the apparently required dangly bits I guess I'll have to join the sorority. :^(
Gotta remember the Golden Ratio, subatomic particles, and wavelength guys!
But we have to keep them separate! None of the other sororities will sosh with us, so we need to have an atheist sorority.
I don't care for Gamma Omicron Delta. How about ΔΟΓ?
Pascal's Wager is one of the worst arguments for believing in God ever. First off, it's arguing that you should believe in God for selfish reasons, rather than loving him or whatever.
Second, and most importantly, it supposes that there is precisely *one* God you can choose to believe in. The moment that you add in a second, imcompatible God to the equation, the entire thing gets thrown to hell. If you believe in God A, and God A is real, you're good. If God B is real, you go to hell after having wasted your life. If no God is real, you die after having wasted your life.
Atheists realize that Pascal's Wager is secretly an argument to go to the beach on Sunday. ^_^
That's true, it's hard to have "mixers" if you're already all mixed.
"100 years ago this year, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics and all of this at age 26."
Erm... to my knowledge, Einstein had nothing to do with 'proving the existence of the atom', and as far as quantum mechanics is concerned, wasn't he against it, right? "God doesn't play dice" and all that?
Here's my thingy. Brain not work good after looking at silly words. I go look for opposite of blender so brain can get back to smart-making.
Ya, we definitely need two Atheist houses, how else could we have Panty Raids?
Splitting by gender is so last millennia though. Let's have a faux schism right off the bat. We could have an Atheist house and a Non-theist house and we could hurl invectives and beat dead semantic horses and then have a Christmas Formal.
Y.B., that description, clearly cribbed from somebody with a clue, seems pretty accurate to the best of my non-physicist knowledge. The Brownian motion paper was the final nail in the coffin for the remaining Machian doubters that atoms were more than a convenient fiction. The photoelectic effect paper (for which he won the Nobel Prize) was by far the most revolutionary move in the early history of the quantum theory (even Planck at first thought it was crazy), notwithstanding Einstein's later disenchantment with the direction QM had taken- Einstein was the first to treat quanta (photons in this case)as real, physical objects, whereas in Planck's derivation of the black-body formula they had been merely a heuristic calculating device.
Wait a minute...I know! We need an Atheist fraternity and an Agnostic fraternity.
Scrolling back up...
Argumentum ad baculum won't carry you far, here.
Additionally, what if God punishes people for believing in things without evidence? Good reason to be an atheist right there. (Preemptive strike against upcoming straw men: Atheism isn't belief in the existence of a disproof of deities, just a lack of belief.)
I'm genuinely curious about this guy's formal education. Not only does his science suck, his writing does as well.
Home-schooled? Some public school whose board is dominated by Bible-bangers, and tax reformers trying to do everything on the cheap? One of those "Christian Academies" demanding the public fund their vouchers?
I'm not sure about that...
I know which one you'll be in.
"Edited in part by D. Donohew"
Me thinks he needs a new editor.....and about a decade of intense therapy.
That reminds me of Terry Pratchett and one of his jacket liners:
Re Steve LaBonne:
Thanks for the info! I'm not that much into physics myself.
Apocrypah2012 scribbled.....
"In a nutshell, it is better to believe in a god that turns out does not exist rather than to _not_ believe in a god that turns out _does_ exist. While neither can be proven the former is the safer bet. :)"
But which one? There are literally thousands and thousands to choose from, many of which will damn you to eternal torment for even the off hand consideration that any of the other spiritual super beings are real. If I want super crappy odds like that, I'll stick to the craps tables in Vegas.
Donohew is more coherent, but of course this merely means he transcends from "not even wrong". Which means that it is amusing to pick apart his arguments.
Donohew invokes Stephen Hawking and bigbang theory to argue origin, but gets it backwards. Hawking notes that the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal for cosmology he presented at a 1981 Vatican conference means "But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" ( http://www.holysmoke.org/cre014.htm ).
Donohew invokes finite time to argue origin, which is specious at best. Hawking has extended his models to embed them in a multiuniverse setting. There are similar multiverse proposals, which removes origin by suggesting that the multiverse is infinitely old. So we have proposals for cosmologies, conistent with observations, that has infinite times, either evolved from a common ancestor (endless inflation) or independent (no-boundary).
Donohew discusses causality as a property of time alone, but gets the ideas wrong. Causality has several expressions in physics, relativity's lightcone causality is one of them. It involves both space and time into spacetime. In bigbang spacetime is broken down. We have today no description of it or of causality in it. Hawkings models have the property that there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary.
Donohew discusses Einstein, but gets the facts wrong. Of course Einstein published his papers 101 years ago. IIRC he published 5 papers that year. The paper that was relevant for quantum mechanics was about the photoelectric effect and proved that Planck's hypothesis to explain blackbody radiation, energy quantization, was instead due to radiation behaving as quanta, ie photons. He didn't describe QM. QM in the form of the first interpretation, the Copenhagen interpretation, was established around 1927, the year Heisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle.
Einstein's general relativity showed clearly that cosmologies are naturally expanding or imploding. He very hesitantly introduced the finetuning of a cosmological constant for one reason only - to be consistent with the observations at the time which was a steadystate universe. This was before Hubble. The cosmological constant was not a mistake, it is reintroduced in the current Lambda-CDM model to explain observations nicely.
Donohew discusses finetuning, but gets it messed up. Inflation, proved by the CMBR he discusses, blew the universe up to be flat and nicely expanding. This process is not so finetuned. There is the new observation that expansion rates at our epoch of time goes from decreasing to increasing, which is an unexplained coincidence, but not a finetuning.
What is a finetuning is that the cosmological constant, a measure of vacumm energy, is about 120 orders of magnitude lower than theories describing the vacuum naturally suggests. There are several ideas explaining this, no one invokes miracles. "Dark energy" may or may not be the CC, that isn't clear AFAIK.
Oh, and there is no "Gravity Wave Telescope". There are several gravitational-wave observatories running, mostly based on laser interferometry. They will try to confirm the waves and learn more about the sources. It will not exactly be highquality imaging at the start.
I was gonna yell "Atheist Keggerrrrrrr!!!!" but I started to get down reading the fellow's letter ... he really seems to be suffering from schizophrenia or some other mental illness. About 3/4 of the way, I started to feel really bad for him.
Jeez, another wasted Atheist Kegger ...
Donohew is also discussing multiverses and gets that mixed up too, surprise, surprise. There isn't one theory, there are several multiverse applications, from philosophical manyworlds to the manyworlds quantum interpretation to the string landscape to the cosmology multiverses. In the physical multiverses physics constrains events, not "absolutely everything is not only possible".
The real knock-down for the Pascal's wager argument is simply that it's just as equally possible that a God exists who has constructed an irrational religion and hidden all rational evidence of its own existence as a test to see whether people are irrational enough to believe anything, immoral enough to believe based purely on authority, and so forth. This God would punish those that believe, instead of those that don't. This perfectly refutes the wager logic, and the original argument itself rules out the complaint that such a scenario is impossible or unlikely. If God could be anything at all, anything you imagine, and is beyond your understanding, then you cannot possibly put bounds of likihood on what God is really up to.
A fun way to read this is to carefully peruse the first paragraph or two, and then start scanning, picking out fewer and fewer words and scrolling faster and faster, until by the time you're halfway through the screed it's moving quickly enough that you can really enjoy the visual effect of mindless rant-text flying past the unmoving "dunderhead" background picture. It's like getting to watch the mental process you go through when one of these people starts babbling at you in person, from the outside.
I love interactive art.
I still want to know what slogan would go on my atheist t-shirt.
Atheist Kegger! No Coors allowed!
I just got back from Yosemite, which I'm told was under the ocean 500 million years ago, and then I read this letter.
I have a headache.
Actually, I just couldn't read the letter. Maybe the first 5% of it, and then I scrolled forward and noticed that it just keeps coming and coming and coming.
Long letters don't necessarily indicate intelligence.
So it is the same Perry Marshall. For those interested, he "defends" his ideas at II on this thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=135497). Wow - I had no idea this thread has almost reached a year in age (and still going).
We need a slogan!
What about: "Better god-less then mindless"
There is always so much presumption when it comes to these people. They always fill in the gaps with what they want rather than what is discovered. Stephen Hawking once admitted that one of his greatest mistakes was in believing that if there is a big bang there must be a big crush, and that if this happens time would move in reverse. Yet all his grad student assistants' computer models showed this wasn't true. They kept going back again and again until they eventually realized that they had filled in the gaps with presumption rather than followed the logic. The big bang was no different than thowing a ball up into the air. It slows then comes to a complete stop for a fraction of a second, then slowly moves downward but in this meager middle school physics experiment time does not go in reverse the moment the ball comes back down. Hawking soon realized that he figured the motion of the universe were somehow a special event that was somehow connected to time. He also stated he did not know how time in reverse would be experienced by life in the universe. Would we even know it? would it just mean that for the over a dozen billion years all our lives would suddenly go backwards? Would we talk in reverse? Would we be conscious of life in the forward time position?
What would happen?
Hawking knew the premise was ridiculous and from that point the proper logic became so obvious that they changed the variables in the model and everything then went as predicted and as expected. Time is just a mesurement of motion but is not dependent on motion since time does not go negative the moment the differential between two points in space become negative. Time stays positive and flowing even while directions of matter in motion change or stand still.
Now this bozo Donohew(made up name) who likes to think he knows anything from which to speak from, admits he knows nothing about what he is writing about, just that it sounds neat and seems to fit in with his logic that he can presume that time did not exist prior to the alleged big bang?
There is no evidence or proofs of any kind that can suggest this other than the creationist kind.
And if you can prove that the experience of time, not time itself, but the 'experience of time' was and could be felt before that point then there is no 'beginning' that can be concluded at that point in time during which the big bang is said to have occured.
MYOB'
.
Actually, that kitchen spray bottle argument isn't all that new. I haven't seen that specific analogy before, but the argument underlying it--that the universe's physical parameters have to be within certain very narrow ranges for life to exist, that the odds of their all being within those ranges purely by chance are negligible, and that therefore they must have been fine-tuned by some intelligent Creator--is very old indeed.
Of course, it's a bad argument for several reasons. The possibility of the existence of multiple universes is indeed a common objection to the argument, and one that the writer dismisses far too facilely, apparently unaware that there are reasons for seriously considering the existence of other, perhaps infinitely many, universes well beyond just providing a justification for the existence of a universe with the particular physical parameters of ours. (The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, for instance.)
The Anthropic Principle is another objection that's been raised to this argument--although not one I put much stock in myself, I admit. Then there's the fact that the whole premise of the argument is, frankly, an unfounded assumption. If the physical parameters of the universe were different, well, yes, obviously, things would be different. But I don't think we could say with confidence that life wouldn't be possible, albeit life operating through very different physical and chemical processes than ours. We'd have a hard time trying to derive the existence of life in our own universe from just the "dark energy term" and other basic properties of our own universe; it's not really possible to declare definitively that life could never have arisen if those had different values!
Oh right (wink). If anyone is reading this there is no secret handshake.
Excellent. Always remember little grasshopper, there is no secret handshake (wink wink), and there is no God (wink wink wink).
Godless.
Not for the weakminded.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The message contained within these few simple words in John 1:1 are absolute proof of the existence of God the creator of all that there is, was, or ever shall be.
Should be added to godless geeks proofs list:
360. Argument from message contained within John 1:1
(1) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
(2) Therefore, God exists.
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
Here's the message I read: Words came first. They were fun to play around with. People made up a "God" word. The "God" word was high-concept and spread like wildfire, and soon enough people came to believe the word represented a being that existed outside of their heads. Big mistake. End of story.
I'm up for the toga party Friday...but PZ, all the BEST fraternities and sororities have a secret handshake...can't we have something...maybe a secret invertebrate?
the Agnostic and Atheist Student Association at UC Davis tried to address the slogan issue. We stuck with a dinner plate with a knife and fork, and one of those jesus fishes was on the plate, saying "save me!" At first glance it looks like a christian shirt, but then you notice what's being served up.
Representing atheism/agnosticism in slogan or picture form is difficult. When we discussed it last year I said: How do you represent the absence of belief in a god? How do you represent the absence of belief in leprechauns?
I like the one that LIH suggested. What about something like: God in Heaven, or Brain in Head. Your choice.
"I'll believe in god when he spanks me for being godless."
ummm...
"Your god don't scare me."
"GOD=-1"
Re. John 1:1 -- The Platonists were wrong; it turns out that matter is actually made up of invisible particles, and is not some sort of crazy 3D projection of eternal thoughts. John tied God to the wrong Greeks.
Speaking of which, if the atheists' fraternity is going to have Greek letters, I think they should be Epicurus's letters to Herodotus and Menoeceus.
Re. Pascal's Wager -- If you're gonna trot out arguments against creationism from a faith perspective, I much prefer the ol' Buddhist koan: "If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill Him." Trying to find confirming evidence for God is like going out and looking for the Buddha in the road.
Hm, my thoughts on the whole matter can be found here: Die Schöpfung
But this guy actually does point out a couple of things with crystal clarity:
He's telling us that belief in GOD is what allows stupid people to live with their stupidity.
He's telling us that belief in God makes it unnecessary to ask questions or seek explanations. A convenience for the incurious.
"Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information. Not without God's help of course!"
So, rocks with God's help can think and talk? What?
Maybe the rocks can tell me where I put my "robes of atheism." Remember that one? The creationist why-don't-atheists-just-murder-everybody-'cause-they-don't-believe-anything dude who claimed, "I donned the robes of atheism," etc.
I can't find my robes. Rocks of the world, speak to me! ("Me-me-me-me...") Oh, well. I'll just wear shorts.
Godless short shorts I hope.
We get a good t-shirt slogan yet?
"Have you ever heard of Stephen Hawkins? How about the big bang theory, ever hear about that?"
Is "Stephen Hawkins" the result of an evil genetic experiment by mixing the DNA of Stephen HAWKING's and Richard DAWKINS' DNA?
Crap. All those grammatical errors... I gotta stop reading these dumb email you post on the blog, PZ.
I did do an "Evil Atheists Conspiracy" logo, a couple of years back, which looked like a bug and could have worked as a stick-pin (which I gather from TV is something which your American fraternities/schools have). It would make neat cuff-links or ear-rings too (bugged ones of course!).
You appear to have missed off the squaring of "GOD" or the square root symbol on "-1".
Oh, man, your last paragraph in the intro ruined my (now denied) Fraternity-Sorority joke. Thanks loads, Prof!
;-)
I say the fraternity of Godless Atheists should forgo studying and/or Star Trek reruns - and go soap the windows of the fraternity of Hypocritical Silly Christians next Friday. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I'd always figured that folks who strenuously try to pick apart scientific views on life, the universe, and everything were basically saying, "Forget all this crazy business of observing and trying to explain your observations, just take our pat answers instead." I've never actually seen someone state it so baldly though.
Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac fraternity brother?
He'd lie awake (in the frat house) wondering if there is a dog.
Y.B: I wouldn't expect the author to have known this, so it does come out garbled. But those two statements are sort of correct. Einstein's paper on brownian motion is supposedly what clinched the atomic hypothesis. Probably true for Mach and his followers, if they had been consistent - i.e. for the exessively positivist physicists at the time. For the chemists, they had been more or less convinced for decades (though not a century - there's some interesting history of sciencethere, for sure). As for quantum theory, well, Einstein is associated with it because of him inventing the photon hypothesis in his paper on the photoelectric effect.
George: Of course, the Greek in that passage does not make life easy for translators. I've only ever found one good way to translate "logos" reasonably successfully. Unfortunately it is into classical Chinese, which doesn't help. ("tao") But see the interesting book Disputers of the Tao before believing this ...
House. Grouchy but lovable atheist.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/07/naive_atheist.html
Ah, I thought much of that screed looked familiar. Perry Marshall has been trounced (and promptly declared victory!) on IIDB more than once.
If anyone is interested, you can do a search in the evolution/creation forum and find a (warning: LOOONG!!) thread about much of the information on his website.
Cheers.
MyOB says:
"Hawking soon realized that he figured the motion of the universe were somehow a special event that was somehow connected to time. He also stated he did not know how time in reverse would be experienced by life in the universe."
Some scientists interested in the "problem of time" thought entropy would reverse. But entropy and gravity isn't yet welldefined. Modern black hole explanations tries to keep unitarity, so black holes may be more sensible entropuwise. But the initial singularity was lowentropy - how is that a property of a 'bounce' final singularity? I believe Hawking's explanation makes more sense to me.
an says:
"But I don't think we could say with confidence that life wouldn't be possible, albeit life operating through very different physical and chemical processes than ours."
I'm not sure a strong anthropic principle is necessary for all cosmologists or string theorists. The weak one may apply, even if it would be a coincidence explanation instead of a probably outcome.
Barry says:
""Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find some way to explain all of this.""
Really? I thought there were religious dominations like panteism without much to explain. There should be atheists allowed the same faith.
No, Torbjörn, Barry didn't say that. Barry quoted that from the original message, and made his own comment on it.
Hey, there already is a t-shirt, and it even comes in pink. The font is a little small, though.
Barry,
Sorry about the confusion and sorry about the delay in answering; I ran a fever.
I did use double citation marks to show the origin of the quote. My comment was a followup to yours. But that wasn't obvious (and the pointer unneccessary) so I shouldn't have used the pointer.